Logistics companies like Mainfreight and Move, major supermarket chains like Foodstuffs, Woolworths and the wider food distribution ecosystem, face escalating diesel and freight costs. Escalating fuel costs hit on-farm operations, transport to processing plants, and shipping to global markets. For Air New Zealand, jet fuel pricing is quickly feeding into route economics and ticket prices. The upshot is logistics firms may have to absorb some diesel spikes and exporters have to decide how much of rising freight and fuel costs they can wear before global competitiveness suffers. Let diesel prices rip and you bake higher costs into food, building materials and freight; intervene too crudely and you distort markets, undermine climate settings and risk blowing the fiscal position.

Source: New Zealand Herald March 20, 2026 23:03 UTC